Delwar Hussein Saidi

Delwar Hossain Saidi (Delu Dalal)

Delwar Hossain Sayeedee as his name is now officially spelled and is being represented with a red diplomatic passport from the ruling BNP government as an Islamic scholar and preacher was originally a boorish mountebank and a pimp of the local brothel at Pirojpur, a small town in Barisal district. The locals still call him Delu (a name that negates all the spirituality that an Arabic name such as Sayeedee inspires) which is the short form of his name Delwar. During the liberation war Saidi was called delu razakar due to his collaboration with the Paki occupation army.

There is no record that Saidi had ever attended any school whether Islamic or public. Like many fake Islamic ‘divines’ Saidi was accorded a title ‘Sayeedee’ overnight and promoted as such by the then Pakistani civil affairs dept, an organization run by the Paki military intelligence (ISI). Saidi’s personal idol must be Hitlar, for both of them assented to power by virtue of their oratory skills. Both of them whet their rhetoric in their first career as a street hawker. Hitler being a German sold fake paintings on the streets, Saidi a rustic quack sold potions for venereal diseases and sexual impotence. As a street hawker saidi had a second job as a pimp for the local brothel. Traditionally most quacks work as pimps in Bangladeshi villages. It is a very lucrative business: they earn commission from the hookers, blackmail the clients and when the clients contract venereal diseases become their permanent patients.

Later Saidi realized that it is more rewarding to sell spiritual potions than cheap potions for gonorrhea and syphilis. He also realized, in course of his career as a quack, that the spiritual sickness is a more prolific opportunity to pry in business than selling potions for sexual impotence. So Saidi assumed his new role: a preacher of (Jamat-e-) Islam. But Saidi does not preach the austere aspects of Islam. He fans the vulgar side of it to draw the perverts to his flock. He uses his obscene rhetoric (used to sell his potions as a quack to cure sexual impotence) to emphasis male chauvinism implicit in the patriarchal religion-Islam. In both cases his technique is same: to pamper male ego and feed male libido. This technique turned him into the most popular preacher of Islam among the Bangladeshi Muslims both home and abroad. Thousands of his audio cassettes are sold in Bangladesh and exported to overseas: middle East, Europe, USA Australia. Bangladeshi males listen to his obscene preaching’s to feed their repressed libidinous urges and secure their authority over their less fortunate women folks. The worst thing is: Saidi’s doctrines constitute the moral fiber of a large number of unenlightened Bangladeshis both home and abroad.

Saidi is the extension of Nizami’s ideological warfare. Nizami sets traps for the unenlightened but literate Muslims, Saidi for illiterate and unrefined Muslims. But Saidi is also very effective for the technically skilled but philosophically unenlightened Bangladeshi Muslims. Every year Saidi earns thousands of dollars and pounds from overseas. Those Bangladeshi immigrants are all skilled migrants. They are skilled but unenlightened, otherwise how do they attend Saidi’s preaching’s when it is impossible for a decently sensible person to stand such vulgar eloquence?

Like his peer Nizami, Saidi was also involved in killing, looting, arson, extortion and confiscation during the liberation war. In both cases their victims were the Hindu Bengalis and people involved in or connected to the liberation war. In 1971 Saidi and his gang formed an espionage network in the Pirojpur area against the freedom fighters. He and his gang once captured a freedom fighter Mr. Abdul Aziz (an ex member of EPR, now BDR) on his secret visit home to see his first born in the dead of the night. Saidi handed Mr Aziz to the Pakistani army who tortured him to death. Saidi’s dossier abounds in this type of murder, torture, extortions and confiscations. Under his appearance of an Islamic preacher, Saidi is nothing but an irremediable imposter, a traitor and a vile monster. Listed below are some of Saidi’s crimes in 1971:

1. In 1971 Saidi was not associated with any political party, but conducted his activities in his individual capacity as a self proclaimed Islamic crusader. There are allegations that he actively helped the Pakistani forces in their campaign of killings, lootings, rape arson etc., by forming local paramilitary forces. During the war, he along with four associates, formed an organization called “Fund of the Five”. The principal aim of the organization was to loot and take over property of freedom fighters and Bengali Hindus. He used to sell those looted property and conduct a profitable business from the sales proceedings.

2. During the liberation war, Saidi ravaged the shop of a Hindu Bengali named Madan and took all his properties away. Saidi opened a shop at Parer Hat steamer station with the merchandise looted from the nearby grocery shops owned by the Hindus. –Mizan, a former freedom fighter from Parer Hat Union Command.

3. In 1971, Saidi forcibly took over the home of Bipin Saha, a local Hindu, and continued to live there during the whole period; carried out anti social activities; drawn up lists of suspected freedom fighters and their relatives and passed it to the Pakistani army camped nearby; supplied young girls, abducted from nearby villages, to Pakistani camps; to help the occupation army Saidi burnt down the ferry port of Parer Hat; he forced the local youths to join Al-Badr forces, any refusals usually led to the killing of the objector. –Advocate Abdur Razzaq Khan, Pirojpur

3. Saidi was behind the murder of one Himangsu Babu and his relatives. He also killed Ganapati Halder, an extraordinarily brilliant student of Pirojpur. Saidi was instrumental to the murder of many intellectuals and mid ranking government officers suspected of sympathizing with the cause of Bangladesh : a. Faijur Rahman, sub divisional police officer (SDPO) and father of writer and professor of Chemistry, Humayun Ahmed b. Abdur Razzaq, acting SDO d. Mizanur Rahman, former leader of the Students’ League, e. Abdul Gaffar Miyan, head teacher f. Samshul Huq Faraji, social worker g. Atul Karmaker.

4. At Saidi’s instruction his gang torn one Bhagirathi into pieces, accused of supplying information to freedom fighters by Saidi, by tying him to the back of a motorbike and dragging him for five miles. Advocate Ali Hyder, Central Leader of Ganatantri Party, Pirojpur.

5. According to Beni Madhab Saha, a resident of Pirojpur, Saidi and his men kidnapped and killed :Krishna Kanta Saha, Bani Kanta Sikdar, Tarani Kanta Sikdar. Saidi and his cohorts carried out repression on the daughters of Hari Sadhu and Bipin Saha, she said. Saidi, after looting the home of the Talukdars, a Hindu landowning family, kidnapped 25 women and sent them to the Pakistan army camp.

Verifiable list of people killed by so-called Maulana Saidi:

Faijur Rahman

Abdur Razzaq

Mizanur Rahman

Al Gaffar Miyan

Samshul H Faraji

Bani Kanta Sikdar

Krishna K Saha

Tarani K Sikdar

Bipin Saha

Hari Sadhu

Atul Karmaker

Bhagirathi

Himangsu Babu

Ganapati Halder

Saidi’s trip to overseas countries and peoples’ reaction

Maulana Rahmat Ali Bhisti: the portrait of a Jamati divine by late Prof Humayun Azad

Reference:

Liberation Museum

Killers and Collaborators of 1971: An Account of Their Whereabouts, compiled and published by the Center for the Development of the Spirit of the Liberation War